Rosenthal says that someone “with close knowledge of the Tigers’ organization” thinks that the Angels may be the best trade partner out there for Detroit, given that they have depth at the three positions the Tigers have the most need: catcher, shortstop, and minimum-salary pitching.

Setting aside the curiousness of the phrase “someone with close knowledge of the Tigers’ organization” — who is that? A writer? A front office guy? A croupier from the MotorCity Casino? — Rosenthal adds the Angels to the long list of teams who would be interested in Curtis Granderson. More so than in Edwin Jackson, despite the fact that he’d help fill a hole created by the presumed departure of John Lackey. It’s all about (a) control, in that Granderson is locked up longer; and (b) Boras, as in Jackson is represented by him, making it less likely that they’d be able to keep him around beyond 2011 when he hits the market.

I think that someone with Granderson’s wit and intelligence – the same acute intelligence that enabled him to undervalue himself for the sake of the Tiggers – would be much happier in Los Angeles than in Detroit. He would find things to eat besides kielbasa and hummos, and he’d find art galleries, museums, concert halls wherein musicians actually play instruments, and salt corrosion instead of rust. Why anybody would want to be traded from the left coast to Detroit, on the other hand, is beyond my comprehension – Zehnder’s fried chicken barn is practically in a parallel universe, and geological stability is great, but at what price? I think you’d have to be just the other side of sociopathic to be a general manager whou trades guys to Detroitus and could still shave without wincing at the sight of themselves in the mirror.
What intrigues me, though, is the notion that general managers can, like the star atheletes who are the commodities of the human trafficking in which they indulge, suffer baseball-related injuries – sprains, tears and ruptures but, in the case of the GMs, to their minds instead of their gross corporeal forms. How else do you explain Dave Dombrowski’s wizard-like moves as GM of the Marlins (the 2003 championship team still had his fingerprints all over it) in light of the decisions he’s made with the Tiggers – as though he were convinced that the guys he traded for were actually the weapons of mass destruction he was promised?

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